


Anchor

by nerdiekatie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Burns, Cutting, Gen, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Mental Health Issues, OOC, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdiekatie/pseuds/nerdiekatie
Summary: “We can be fucked up together, alright buddy?”





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning. Depictions of self harm. Recovery is hard.

The first cut is shallow. So shallow, in fact, that it doesn't show up for five minutes, by which time he's made five more. They stretch across the line of his hip. His fingers come away just a little bloody from stretching his skin to make a steady line. He takes the toilet paper- four sheets, folded once for thickness- and presses it to his hip. His underwear holds it in place.

He fidgets.

He starts on the other hip. This time, his cuts start steadier and deeper. They bleed instantly. On the last one, the skin pulls apart. _That'll probably scar,_ he thinks, pressing fresh toilet paper over.

It's meditative, almost. Hold, stretch. Straight line. Add pressure as you move across. The stinging means it'll bleed. He feels steadier. Accomplished, even. He presses down on his hips just to feel the sting. A reminder- something he did that he can feel and see.

He feels justified, vindicated, punished. The feeling of having fucked up swirls around him like smoke, over his arms, over his shoulders, before it sits, writhing, in his chest. He can't remember when he fucked up, but he  _knows_ that he has. Or that he will. He deserves this. He needs this.

He feels spiraling, out of control, crazy. He presses down harder, and feels the toilet paper dampen further. There are so many things he'd rather do- scream. Run into walls. Bang his head against the bed frame. Slap himself until he bruises black and blue. This is quieter. And faster. Safer than the other urges he feels- the brush of rope against his throat, itchy and tight as it compresses his trachea, the cold sharp slide of a knife between his ribs, stinging cuts and wet sticky blood on his thin skinned wrists with their prominent veins beneath them.

He keeps going. Cuts between cuts, the fresh beside the half healed until there's no space left and he's afraid he'll accidentally cut skin off. He moves down his thighs, line by line. He reaches all the way down his calves. _Satisfaction_.

He moves up, across the tender flesh of his belly, the skin across his ribs, the line of his collarbone. Four broad columns, at first, then the lines between them as he runs out of room.

He moves onto his shoulders and arms, trying to reach as much as he can. He hits his elbows. Fine. Hips again, they're healed enough by now.

He's caught. It was bound to happen eventually. He wants to laugh. He wants cry. He wants to paste on a smile just to see if his eyes are wild enough for Lance to accept the dare and contradict him.

He stares dumbly, silently. Waits for Lance to move first.

“Give it here,” Lance says. Hunk toys with the idea of not handing his razor over. He doesn't exactly want to stop. But he does. Want to stop. He sighs and hands it over. Lance takes it from him with gentle fingers.

“Why?” he asks. Hunk shrugs.

He lasts a few weeks- then the restlessness sets in, the feeling of his skin draped improperly over his bones, and he feels the phantom sensation of blood on his wrists.

His razor is gone. It’s probably been ejected into space. He doesn't have another.

He turns on a soldering iron and presses the warm metal to his thigh. He resists jerking away as his neurons signal _pain, pain_ to his brain. It's too fast- the iron takes a bit to heat up, sure, but there’s none of the slide and release that comes with cutting. Just adrenaline. But it's just as quiet, and that's good enough for him as he dribbles cold water onto his burns.

He’s caught again. Lance tells the team, and Hunk spends a lot of time convincing the team he’s not suicidal. He’s not sure they understand how you can want to hurt yourself without wanting to kill yourself. He doesn’t know how to explain the _wanting_.

He’s not allowed in his lab without a babysitter. Hunk’s a sharer, but they are uninvited and unwanted and seeing them as a constant reminder in his lab makes him want to throw things.

He clenches his fists, pressing his blunt nails into his palms, every time he has to ask someone to come to the lab with him. This is the _one thing_ he should be able to do. He holds them back already and now they have to waste resources making sure he doesn’t go off the deep end.

Just like the first time, he keeps with the program from a few weeks. Then comes a night when he can’t sleep because he’s moving so fast and everything else is infuriatingly still.

Lance finds him just standing there, in the middle of lab. Lance chews his lip, his dark eyes swirling, before he pushes up his sleeves. Hunk sees the lines of scars of Lance’s wrists.

“We can be fucked up together, alright buddy?” Lance looks up at Hunk unsurely. “I’ll come to you if you come to me?” And _fuck_ , that’s not an offer Hunk can refuse. Hunk nods, already crying so hard that he can’t see anymore. Hunk flinches when he feels Lance gently wrap his arms around Hunk’s body before returning the embrace. He lets himself sink into Lance’s warmth. It’s an anchor in the unrelenting vacuum of space, and Hunk finds that he can breathe a little deeper.

He gets better. Never completely, but still better. Fewer urges, less intense. He rubs lotion into his skin then, trying to be kind. But it's a long difficult winding road, and when he has to throw away his razors and lock up his tools he has to grit his teeth against the bitter taste of disappointment on his tongue.

Afterwards, Lance always tells him he’s so proud, how Hunk is so strong. Hunk presses his face into Lance’s chest and waits for a day when that can be true.

**Author's Note:**

> So I added the unreliable narrator tag because mental illness fucks with your head, and if you're struggling, I want you to know that you're very, very strong, and I'm very proud of you.


End file.
